Process diary

Tessa Magliano

These images are not photographs. They are digital paintings, created stroke-by-stroke from scratch. My artwork concerns the self-deceptive power of human intelligence, and what we accept as genuine at first glance. The illustrations serve as a primary example of this self-deception: they’re convincing enough that at first glance they’re assumed to be photographs. The animals in these paintings aren’t real either – but reality is a concept created exclusively by humans, as is intelligence. Our occupation with knowledge distracts from the truth that these concepts are all human creations that exist only within our minds.